


Infinity

by kathkin



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, fluff with a side of philosophy, fluffosophical?, may induce War Games feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-31
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-03-20 15:18:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3655182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathkin/pseuds/kathkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jamie remembered when the Doctor had first explained evolution to him. It had taken him some time to wrap his head around it, but once he did he felt terribly small. A hundred or a thousand years seemed a long time to him; millions and millions was too much time to fit in his head. Or when he’d learned that continents shifted over time, like tides on the sea but bigger and much, much slower; that long, long ago the land that would be Scotland was thousands of miles further south and underwater.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Infinity

**Author's Note:**

> Owes a fair bit to the ' _Are all people like this? So much bigger on the inside._ ' line from _The Doctor's Wife_ and also to the following [Sandman](http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/810826-a-game-of-you) quote:
> 
>  
> 
> _“Everybody has a secret world inside of them. I mean everybody. All of the people in the whole world, I mean everybody — no matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. Inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds... Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe.”_
> 
>  
> 
> So, I tip my hat to Neil Gaiman, basically.

“Hmm,” Jamie said, blinking awake. “What’s that you’re doing?”

It felt like the wee hours of the morning. The bedside lamp was on, but turned down low, drenching the bedroom in soft golden light and deep shadows. He’d awoken to find the Doctor seated atop him, holding Jamie’s right hand in both of his, turning it about in the hazy light as if admiring it.

“Hush, you,” said the Doctor, half a whisper. “Go back to sleep.”

“Can I have my hand back?” 

“No,” said the Doctor. “I’m conducting a scientific study.”

“On me hand?” Jamie blinked. 

“Maybe,” said the Doctor. “I haven’t made up my mind yet. Go back to sleep.”

Jamie rubbed his free hand across his eyes. “How long’ve you been watching me sleep?”

The Doctor looked down at him, a sheepish smile upon his face. “About half an hour,” he admitted. “I was bored. I finished the book I was reading.”

He was still holding Jamie’s hand, rubbing his thumb fondly across the knuckles. “So you started studyin’ me instead?”

“Hmm.” The Doctor lifted Jamie’s hand a little higher, bringing it closer to his face so as better to inspect it. “Does that bother you?”

“No,” said Jamie. He was too sleepy to be bothered. “Just doesnae sound very interesting.”

“On the contrary.” The Doctor interlaced his fingers with Jamie’s, squeezing. “Do you know how many bones there are in the human hand?”

“Can’t say I do.”

“Twenty-seven,” said the Doctor. “More than you’d think, isn’t it?”

“Spose,” said Jamie. To tell the truth, he’d never really thought about it.

The Doctor was straightening out Jamie’s fingers, and he waggled in the direction of Jamie’s face. “Millions of years of evolution went into refining this structure. There’s nothing boring about it.”

He remembered when the Doctor had first explained evolution to him. It had taken him some time to wrap his head around it, but once he did he felt terribly small. A hundred or a thousand years seemed a long time to him; millions and millions was too much time to fit in his head. Or when he’d learned that continents shifted over time, like tides on the sea but bigger and much, much slower; that long, long ago the land that would be Scotland was thousands of miles further south and underwater.

He said, “what’s that got to do with watching me sleep?”

“I’m making a study of you,” said the Doctor. “You should go back to sleep. I may be all night.” Still holding Jamie’s wrist, he traced the fingers of one hand down his inner arm, coming to rest just above his elbow. He tapped that spot gently. “How did you come by this?”

“Eh?” said Jamie. The Doctor lifted his arm, tilting it into the light, showing him the tiny, faint scar. It took Jamie a moment to dredge his memory. “Fell out of a tree.”

“How old were you?” The Doctor was staring intently at the scar, rubbing his thumb over it and over it, as fascinated by it as he might be by a strange new animal or planet or star.

“Och, I don’t know. Nine or ten.” Jamie yawned, covering his mouth. “Skinned both me knees, too.”

The Doctor chuckled softly and pressed his lips to the scar. His tongue darted out, wetting the skin. Jamie wrinkled his nose as the Doctor traced his thumb over the scar again, spreading about the dampness as if claiming that patch of skin for his own. Like planting a flag on undiscovered territory; _here, I found this, so it is mine._

“How long are you goin’ to study me for?” Jamie wondered aloud.

“I don’t know.” The Doctor sounded as if he’d only just considered the question. “Until I’m finished, I suppose.”

“Oh, aye?” Jamie yawned again, covering his mouth with his hand. “Won’t take that long. There’s nae that much of me. Then you’ll have to find something else to do.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” the Doctor mused. “People aren’t like books, you know. They don’t have endings.”

“How’d you mean?” He didn’t really expect a straight answer, and sure enough he didn’t get one.

“Do you ever wonder.” The Doctor turned Jamie’s hand palm-upwards and began tracing the lines there with his fingertips. “If you were to take a piece of matter – hmm, a grain of sand, say – and cut it in half, and in half again, and again – and keep on halving it – what would happen?”

Jamie rubbed his eyes. “It would get smaller?”

“Smaller and smaller,” the Doctor echoed. “Would it ever stop?”

“I dinnae follow.”

“Say you had fine enough cutting instruments,” said the Doctor. “Would you be able to keep halving and halving for ever, or would you eventually reach the bottom of the universe?”

Jamie squinted up at him and found the expression on his lined face fond, but otherwise unreadable. “Och, I’m too sleepy for all this clever talk.”

“I was just ruminating,” said the Doctor. He fell silent, examining the palm of Jamie’s hand intently. 

Jamie watched his eyes flick back and forth a while, and nudged him. “So which is it?”

“Hmm?” The Doctor’s eyes flicked to his face.

“Would it go on forever or would you touch bottom?”

“Oh,” said the Doctor absently. “I haven’t the slightest idea. That’s the joy of it. Leucippus,” he added obscurely.

“Leu-what?”

“Leucippus,” the Doctor repeated. “He was one of the first men to pose that question – on earth, at any rate. He was a Greek.”

“Oh, aye,” said Jamie. He considered the problem himself, in a sleepy sort of way. “I’m nae sure I like the idea of the universe having a bottom.”

“Nor do I,” said the Doctor. “It’s a fascinating idea, isn’t it? That you could take any object – anything at all – and dig deep enough, and you’d find – infinity.”

“Hmm,” murmurred Jamie. He wasn’t at all sure what to say to that.

“Do you know,” the Doctor went on. “There’s over two hundred bones in your body.”

“Is that so?”

“Do you know how many cells there are?” Jamie shook his head. “Somewhere in the region of thirty-seven trillion.”

Jamie blinked, startled at the scale of that number. “How many’s a trillion?”

“A million millions,” said the Doctor.

Jamie grappled with that number, trying to wrestle it into submission. If a million was a thousand-thousand then a trillion was – was – “Och, that’s a lot.”

“And in every one of those cells, there’s as many atoms as there are cells in your body,” the Doctor went on in a meandering tone. “And every one of those atoms is arranged according to the same pattern as a solar-system.”

“Och, slow down,” said Jamie. “You’re making my head spin.”

“Sorry, Jamie,” said the Doctor with a bashful smile. He fell silent a moment, tracing the bones in Jamie’s wrist as if trying to count them through the skin. “Do you see my point?”

“I’m nae sure. Keep goin’.” He didn’t really mind if he understood it or not. He liked listening to the Doctor talk.

“That’s rather how people are, isn’t it?” the Doctor said. “You could know a person fifty, sixty, a hundred years and they could still surprise you. They could have whole worlds inside their head that no-one else would ever see. All those lost, buried memories, those dreams – you dream every night, do you know? Most of them stay in your head.” He reached down and tapped Jamie’s temple lightly. “You could study someone for a whole lifetime and never know all there is to know about them. That’s the nature of infinity. Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“If you say so,” said Jamie. The Doctor was looking down at him so fondly, so encouragingly. He raised Jamie’s hand to his lips and began to kiss his knuckles – one, two, three, four, five. Jamie frowned, considering. “It’s a bit like the TARDIS,” he mused. “Isn’t it?”

The Doctor looked at him, startled. His face broke into his sunniest smile. “Yes. Yes! That’s my point exactly. Like the TARDIS.” He let go of Jamie’s hand at last, letting it fall to land gently upon his stomach. He reached up to touch Jamie’s face, tracing the line of his jaw. “What about this?”

“Hmm?” said Jamie, confused.

“This, here,” the Doctor repeated. He took Jamie’s hand and guided it to his own jaw, making him feel the faintest dip of scar tissue. “How did you come by this?”

Jamie kept his fingers upon his jaw even as the Doctor released his grip. “I dinnae ken.”

“Don’t remember?” Jamie shrugged and shook his head. He half expected the Doctor to be disappointed, but if anything that seemed to please him. Maybe it fitted in nicely with whatever obscure point he was making.

His hands slid up, up under Jamie’s loose nightshirt – not with any intent, just stroking lightly over his skin in gentle curves. “What’s that you’re doing?” 

“I am committing you to memory,” the Doctor declared.

“I thought you were makin’ a study of me,” said Jamie.

“I can’t do both?” The Doctor’s fingertips skated across his stomach. “Do you ever do that?”

“Do what?”

“Commit something to memory,” said the Doctor. “I don’t mean important things, you understand – feelings. Moments. Arbitrary moments. Do you ever look around and think to yourself, _I shall remember this_?”

Jamie thought about it. “Aye. I know what you mean.”

“Hmm. Good.” The Doctor’s hands slipped from beneath his nightshirt, and his head dipped down, lips brushing Jamie’s in a soft kiss that quickly turned firm, but not demanding. There was no force there, no intent, no request for anything more than a simple kiss; and Jamie cupped his hand about the Doctor’s face and kissed back.

The Doctor drew back an inch or so, just far enough to gaze down at Jamie, the look in his eye so very fond. “I shall remember this,” he pronounced.

“Aye.” Jamie took the Doctor’s face in both hands, holding him steady, studying his funny lined face, drinking in every detail. He drank it in and stored it away inside his head together with memories of long, lazy afternoons, of the sky at night, of sunsets.

At length, he sighed and shoved the Doctor away, rolling onto his side. “Right. I’m going back to sleep.”

“Good lad,” said the Doctor. “Get some rest.” 

“And I cannae sleep with you studyin’ me,” Jamie said, his eyes still closed.

“Oh, really?” The Doctor sounded so disappointed. His arm looped around Jamie’s waist, reeling him in and rolling him over. 

Jamie settled with his head on the Doctor’s clothed chest. The buttons of his shirt bit into his cheek, but he didn’t much mind. “Aye. Alright,” he said, the Doctor’s fingers trailing through his hair. “Alright, then.”


End file.
